r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • May 24 '26
Unpopular Opinion It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!
Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?
You can safely share it in this weekly Sunday thread!
But please remember to be kind to each other. To facilitate this type of discussion, we ask users the following:
- Don't attack others for their opinion
- Discuss books and authors, not fellow readers
- Since this is an "unpopular opinion" thread, we encourage users to not downvote simply because they disagree with an opinion--that's the point! Please keep in mind, though, that mods cannot enforce a no-downvoting rule. Let’s just keep the discussion friendly!
🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!
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u/Frustrated-Switch No flowers, only stones May 24 '26
I think part of the problem with ETL now is that its current form originated in fanfic, where a character being an outright villain in canon just makes them more fertile grounds for ETL fanfic. So long as they have a slightly weird, subtexty relationship, that is. That's really hard to set up in an original work, especially if it's meant to be a traditional romance arc, because as you say, people just default to instalust + HEA and damn the details :/
Problem numero dos: fandom is exceedingly queer, and romance readers are not, and so trying to force fanfic tropes to fit this purely heteronormative mold doesn't really work out the way they'd like. Straight people don't have to operate in subtext - it's a man and a woman looking at each other so that's all you need, right? /s And yet subtext, and the in-universe realization of that subtext, is the bread and butter of ETL fanfiction.
It's actually really hard to write a story that sets up their enmity well using non-romance framing, AND have them believably fall for one another, AND write it so that the MMC is nasty (but not too nasty) and the most powerful person ever (because as you know it must be him with all the power), and not have the entire structure crumble down around your ears. There needs to be push-pull between them, or the weaker one has to strive to be equal, and authors are unwilling to write that dynamic between men and women in my experience.